Week 2 - Chiang Mai.
06/10/04

I'm pleased to report that so far my cat bite has not developed into full blown rabies - a relief I'm sure for any young children who may be reading this. This week moved a fair bit faster than the last, and having found my feet abroad and repurchased the rest of my field equipment, I managed to cram in a fair bit more animal observation than last week. The big story is Monkeyville, although I'll get to that all in good time.

So then, we travelled from the South to the North of Thailand, praying that our imminent visit to the lush jungle would bring us within striking distance of some truely excellent animal specimens. Our first stop was Chiang Mai, a touristic hotspot popular with hippies and eco-celebs such as Angelina Jolie and Richard Gere. Why? So that they can pretend to us that they're real people who don't always stay in twenty star hotels, and who really do care about deforestation and the environment and stuff. This is despite that fact that they each own seventy lear jets, plus one for each of their hairdressers.

Anyway, within a day of arriving in Chiang Mai, I noticed that I was getting bitten by more and more mosquitos - a good sign, although one that my ankles and feet took a little getting used to. Now, these mosquitos are not your usual common or garden midges that you'd expect to be assailed by on a typical summer picnic in England. Think of longer, fatter creatures, who lack any form of subtelty when closing in for the kill. Honestly, they may as well have phoned ahead - you can actually hear them coming towards you, and then feel the weight as they clumsily land on your leg. To say that these mosquitos lack docking proficiency is a distinct understatement. Killing tens of thousands of them may be bad karma, but doing so with a hastily concocted deodorant flamethrower has become something of a sport, and one in which I now consider myself of world class level.

Also numerous in their proliferation are the only animals better than I am at dispatching mosquitos - Geckos. They congregate around fluroescent lighting like tuktuk drivers around train terminals. Although not as visually stunning as their South American counterparts, the grey coloured Asian Gecko nevertheless possesses that unmistakeable Gecko charm that comes from having chubby toes and bulgy eyes. I counted 22 on the ceiling one night, and that was after a couple of drinks.

Geckos are great animals. Fact.

Aside from these two specimens though, nothing much took my breath away in Chiang Mai town. It was time to go to the jungle...

Side note: I seem to have mislaid a pair of socks. This could be problematic, as I only brought 3 pairs with me.

Into the Jungle...